Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO

14 February 2017

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

The tested lens doesn’t have any problems with the longitudinal chromatic aberration no matter what focal length you employ and the following examples show it pretty well. Light colouring of out-of-focus images is noticeable but that effect remains neither distinct nor especially bothersome.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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The graphs below show the performance of lateral chromatic aberration depending on values of the focal length and aperture. The first graph corresponds to the results from the E-PL1 and the second one shows the results from the E-M5 Mark II.

It is also clear that the aberration won’t be bothersome at the longer focal lengths. At the widest angle of view the level of that aberration is medium, no matter what aperture you employ. They highest aberration level you get at 25 mm; by most of apertures it is medium for most of apertures but near the maximum relative aperture it gets closer to value we call high.

E-PL1, RAW, 25 mm, f/4.0	E-PL1, RAW, 60 mm, f/11.0

Spherical aberration

The first photos of this chapter show clearly that the lens doesn’t have any ‘focus shift’ effect. Circles we got in front of and behind the focus don’t feature any warning signals and they are similar to each other. It indicates lack of problem with the correction of spherical aberration no matter what focal length you use.